Pink, Oliver

5 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

Die Presse - Austria | 29/10/2015

Exodus to Europe: Vienna must talk about fences too

The Austrian government is at odds over whether to construct a fence on its border with Slovenia. The conservative daily Die Presse defends the idea: "Austria is trying to pass on the responsibility to both sides - to Germany and Slovenia. This may be right in terms of realpolitik, but then you can't really boast about being the world champion in humanitarianism. We should see ourselves for what we are: scoundrels. Nonetheless we must still talk about the fence - or whatever they want to call it. Because this brings us back to the question of trust. A state that knows no borders, that allows thousands of people to pass through (even if it knows they will move on to Germany) will lose its citizens' trust."

Exodus to Europe: Tougher deportations policy at last

The EU wants to speed up the process of deporting asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected. The EU border agency Frontex is to create a special "returns unit" to this end, the European Commission announced on Wednesday in Brussels. The conservative daily Die Presse welcomes the plan: "So far the approach to deportations has been rather lax, because it's not so easy to remove someone from a country against his will. If something goes wrong there's a huge uproar, not least in the media. Many rejected asylum seekers simply go underground. And police resources are not unlimited. This is where the EU wants to step in: a deportations department is to be set up at EU border agency Frontex to help the national authorities. Deportations are to be carried out at the reception centres on the EU's outer borders, the hotspots. … There is no alternative if we want to have enough space for those who really need it."

Austria on its own now

Germany's border controls will turn Austria from a transit country into a destination country so Vienna must react accordingly, the liberal-conservative daily Die Presse demands: "Austria is more or less on its own now that Germany's generosity ends at our border. It must make its decision on its own. A decision between the head and the heart; between emotion and reason. It is undisputed that we should take in refugees. The question is how many we can take in. We cannot have uncontrolled mass immigration. And it's not just about how many we can accommodate in the current crisis situation. We must also think beyond now: How can we integrate all these people from a different culture and with a different religion, many of whom will stay here? If our liberal lifestyle is enough of an incentive, that's great. If not, we will have to define a kind of guiding culture."

Not all Austrians are corrupt

The commission of enquiry tasked with investigating corruption affairs during the term of office of former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel began its work on Thursday. In addition to Schüssel, who belongs to the conservative ÖVP, Austria's social democrats also face various charges of corruption. Corruption is apparently part and parcel of Austrian politics, writes the liberal-conservative daily Die Presse: "Either only those people become politicians who right from the start intend to use every opportunity that presents itself for their own personal ends, or those who started out as idealists are gradually corrupted by the system. ... Certainly, that doesn't hold for everyone. Nevertheless it's astonishing that despite the risk of being caught - most often when one is no longer in power or no longer has the power to prevent it - politicians continually dare to play fast and loose with the rule of law which also - and especially - applies to them."

University protests for the sake of protest

Today is International Students' Day and all over the world students are demonstrating against cuts in education budgets. The daily Die Presse compares today's student protests in Austria with the student protests against Nazi terror in Prague in 1939, which today is intended to commemorate, and finds few similarities. On 17 November 1939 the Nazis arrested thousands of Czech students in Prague and deported them to concentration camps: "Right from the start it was obvious that, driven by a left-wing vocal minority, the demands of those occupying lecture halls go far beyond student concerns. And actually they are wide of the mark - as a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Youth Culture Research shows. 23 percent of the respondents actually supported regulating university entry, while the more general ideological issues - education instead of training (1 percent), socio-political measures (2 percent), democratisation of universities (3 percent), free access to higher education (7 percent) - are of little interest to the vast majority of students. Whereas the demonstrations seventy years ago were about life and death, today many students are protesting just for the sake of it."